Related papers: Thermalisation of a quantum system from first prin…
We provide a pedagogical introduction to eigenstate thermalization. This phenomenon, which occurs in generic quantum systems, allows one to understand why thermalization takes place in isolated systems under unitary dynamics. We motivate…
In the present note, we discuss a simple example of a macroscopic quantum many-body system in which the approach to thermal equilibrium from an arbitrary initial state in the microcanonical energy shell is proved without relying on any…
Thermalization of isolated many-body systems is demonstrated by generalizing an approach originally due to von Neumann: For arbitrary initial states with a macroscopically well-defined energy, quantum mechanical expectation values become…
A large class of isolated quantum system in a pure state can equilibrate and serve as a heat bath. We show that once the equilibrium is reached, any of its subsystems that is much smaller than the isolated system is thermalized such that…
Thermal behavior in subsystems of closed quantum systems is commonly attributed to dynamical chaos, quantum ergodicity, canonical typicality, or the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, suggesting a fundamentally statistical origin of…
Thermalization is the process through which a physical system evolves toward a state of thermal equilibrium. Determining whether or not a physical system will thermalize from an initial state has been a key question in condensed matter…
There is much interest in how quantum systems thermalize after a sudden change, because unitary evolution should preclude thermalization. The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis resolves this because all observables for quantum states in a…
Entanglement within a given device provides a potential resource for quantum information processing. Entanglement between system and environment leads to decoherence (thus suppressing non-classical features within the system) but also opens…
We consider a quantum system weakly coupled to a large heat bath of harmonic oscillators. It is well known that such a boson bath initially at thermal equilibrium thermalises the system. We show that assuming a priori an equilibrium state…
This review is devoted to the problem of thermalization in a small isolated conglomerate of interacting constituents. A variety of physically important systems of intensive current interest belong to this category: complex atoms, molecules…
A new microcanonical equilibrium state is introduced for quantum systems with finite-dimensional state spaces. Equilibrium is characterised by a uniform distribution on a level surface of the expectation value of the Hamiltonian. The…
We investigate the emergence of thermalization in a quantum field-theoretic model mimicking the production of jets in QCD -- the massive Schwinger model coupled to external sources. Specifically, we compute the expectation values of local…
Understanding how an isolated quantum system evolves toward a thermal state from an initial state far from equilibrium such as one prepared by a global quantum quench has attracted significant interest in recent years. This phenomenon can…
Understanding the evolution towards thermal equilibrium of an isolated quantum system is at the foundation of statistical mechanics and a subject of interest in such diverse areas as cold atom physics or the quantum mechanics of black…
The internal energy of individual subsystems is not well defined in interacting quantum systems, leading to ambiguities in the definition of thermodynamic quantities. Applying the Schmidt basis formalism to general bipartite autonomous…
The grand canonical ensemble lies at the core of quantum and classical statistical mechanics. A small system thermalizes to this ensemble while exchanging heat and particles with a bath. A quantum system may exchange quantities represented…
Accurately describing work extraction from a quantum system is a central objective for the extension of thermodynamics to individual quantum systems. The concepts of work and heat are surprisingly subtle when generalizations are made to…
The fact that macroscopic systems approach thermal equilibrium may seem puzzling, for example, because it may seem to conflict with the time-reversibility of the microscopic dynamics. We here prove that in a macroscopic quantum system for a…
We consider the question of thermalization for isolated quantum systems after a sudden parameter change, a so-called quantum quench. In part icular we investigate the pre-requisites for thermalization focusing on the statistical properties…
Investigation on foundational aspects of quantum statistical mechanics recently entered a renaissance period due to novel intuitions from quantum information theory and to increasing attention on the dynamical aspects of single quantum…